Dump Recycled And Reused

25 October 2007 - 10:00am

A former dump in Israel will be converted into a theme park focusing on recycling -- the centerpiece to what will be a 2,000 acre public park.

"The Hiriya dump, closed nine years ago, will serve as the centerpiece for what is to become a vast 2,000-acre urban wilderness. The monumental dirt mountain, which sits at the intersection of some of Israel’s busiest highways, will be transformed into a beauty spot designed by a German landscape architect, Prof. Peter Latz."

"When the dignitaries gather, a seething mass of more than 565 million cubic feet of garbage will be slowly decomposing underfoot, releasing a noxious cocktail of greenhouse gases — mostly methane and carbon dioxide, with a few sulfur compounds thrown in. It will take many more years for all the waste matter to break down."

“'At first I thought it should go,' said Martin Weyl, a former director of the Israel Museum, who first came up with the idea of turning the dump into an attraction. 'But then I thought garbage is a big part of our lives. We shouldn’t hide it.'"

"Instead, Hiriya is set to become an environmental beacon and a theme park on recycling for children, tapping into a global concern."

Source: The New York Times, October 24, 2007
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All of that only scratches the surface of what's wrong with this study. The idea that complex urban development patterns and human behavior can be meaningfully studied according to one primary criteria — density — is wrong from the start.